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How do I keep an S-Corporation open when it has no revenues | If you have no net income or loss, you can usually get away without filing a tax return. In Illinois, the standard is: Filing Requirements You must file Form IL-1120 if you are a corporation that has net income or loss as defined under the IITA; or is qualified to do business in the state of Illinois and is required to file a federal income tax return (regardless of net income or loss). http://tax.illinois.gov/Businesses/TaxInformation/Income/corporate.htm Just keep your filing fee and any business licenses up to date, paying those fees personally and not out of business money (that would make for a net loss and trigger needing a tax return). Frankly, with how easy it is to register a new corp, especially an LLC which has many simplicity advantages from an S-corp in certain cases, you might still be better off shutting it down until that time. |
USA H1B Employee - Capital gains in India from selling selling stocks | the demat account that I have in India is not an NRI account. Since I was not sure how long I would be in the US, I never converted my account to NRI account. Is it required to convert my account to NRI account? Yes it is very much required by law. One should not buy or sell shares in the Resident account. One has to close and open a new account NRO Demat account and transfer the shares / units into it. Sell from this account. If you need to buy shares when one is NRI, an Demat PINS account is required to be opened. |
Are American Eagle $20 gold coins considered “securities”, requiring dealers to be licensed to sell them as such? | No. Securities brokers/dealers in the United States are licensed to broker debt and equity in corporations. (There are additional, commodities licenses to broker derivatives.) $20 American Eagle coins, or any other type of physical currency or physical precious metals can be traded or brokered by anyone without a specific license (except maybe a sales tax registration). The only situation where a securities license would be required is if a legal entity is holding the coins and you deal/broker an interest in that legal entity. For example, dealing in SPDR Gold Shares or a similar structure holding either physical assets or the right to purchase those assets (like a commodity pool) would require a securities and/or commodities dealing license. |
Can I deduct personal loans or use them as tax “write offs?” | You will have to write it off as an offset of capital gains or as bad debt against personal income, limited to $3k/ yr. Write off 3k this year, 2k next. Here's the tax code, you'll need to file a form 8949, link below. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc450/tc453 So, this requires that it is a loan, acknowledged by both you and the borrower, with terms of repayment and stated interest, as well as wording for late payments and time for delinquency. The loan document doesn't have to be fancy, but it must show a reasonable intention of repayment to distinguish it from a gift. Then send out a 1099c for cancellation of debt. This is a starting point, it's a good idea to run everything by your tax processional to make sure you're meeting the requirements for bad debt with your contact and payment communication. |
What are dividends, when are they paid, and how do they affect my position? | Dividends are normally paid in cash, so don't generally affect your portfolio aside from a slight increase to 'cash'. You get a check for them, or your broker would deposit the funds into a money-market account for you. There is sometimes an option to re-invest dividends, See Westyfresh's answer regarding Dividend Re-Investment Plans. As Tom Au described, the dividends are set by the board of directors and announced. Also as he indicated just before the 'record' date, a stock which pays dividends is worth slightly more (reflecting the value of the dividend that will be paid to anyone holding the stock on the record date) and goes down by the dividend amount immediately after that date (since you'd now have to hold the stock till the next record date to get a dividend) In general unless there's a big change in the landscape (such as in late 2008) most companies pay out about the same dividend each time, and changes to this are sometimes seen by some as 'indicators' of company health and such news can result in movement in the stock price. When you look at a basic quote on a ticker symbol there is usually a line for Div/yeild which gives the amount of dividend paid per share, and the relative yeild (as a percentage of the stock price). If a company has been paying dividends, this field will have values in it, if a company does not pay a dividend it will be blank or say NA (depending on where you get the quote). This is the easiest way to see if a company pays a dividend or not. for example if you look at this quote for Google, you can see it pays no dividend Now, in terms of telling when and how much of a dividend has been paid, most financial sites have the option when viewing a stock chart to show the dividend payments. If you expand the chart to show at least a year, you can see when and how much was paid in terms of dividends. For example you can see from this chart that MSFT pays dividends once a quarter, and used to pay out 13 cents, but recently changed to 16 cents. if you were to float your mouse over one of those icons it would also give the date the dividend was paid. |
Can individual investors buy precious metals at the spot price? | The futures market allows you to take delivery at the lowest cost. Most people don't deal in 100oz gold bars and 5000oz of 1000oz silver bars though, especially at the retail level. That said, when you are at the retail level, often times you will find reputable Internet dealers offering the lowest cost of ownership. Keep in mind brand name though when you're doing this. Reputable refiners/mints will often see higher premiums versus generic, and this does matter to some extent. Quantity and weights also matter in terms of pricing; the more you buy the lower the premium. |
How to help a financially self destructive person? | Back in the day, they had a highly effective solution for this type of crap, but it is frowned upon in modern society. The second-best solution would be to get your lawyer to put together a case that she is unfit to be around the children and that visitation rights should be revoked. Unfortunately, this will most likely not solve her problems, and she will probably become far worse as she feels more alone, alienated, miserable, and embarrassed. |
Is the I.T. function in banking considered to be on the expense side, as opposed to revenue side? | Here is how your CEO has to see it. Of course, eventually most revenues are generated by IT systems but technically IT still is an expense only activity unless of course you are selling the software/services offered by it. According to the US GAAP, software development costs are capitalized when a firm develops a software for its own use (e.g., nice shiny UI show bank's VaR, algorithmic trading engines, internal security infrastructure etc.). When the software is developed for sale, all the costs are expensed as incurred until the technical feasibility is established after which the costs are capitalized. The income is realized when licenses to use the software or the services provided by it are sold. According to international standards, the treatment for both the use cases shown above is the same --all the costs are expensed as incurred until the technical feasibility is established after which the costs are capitalized. The income is realized when licenses to use the software or the services provided by it are sold. |
How an ETF pays dividend to shareholders if a holding company issues dividend | Dividends are not paid immediately upon reception from the companies owned by an ETF. In the case of SPY, they have been paid inconsistently but now presumably quarterly. |
What happens to the original funds when a certified bank check is not cashed? | The answer probably varies with local law, and you haven't said where you're located. In most or all US states, it appears that after some statutory length of time, the bank would transfer the money to the state government, where it would be held indefinitely as "unclaimed property" in the name of the recipient (technically, the payee, the person to whom the check is made payable). This process is called escheatment. Most states publish a list of all unclaimed property, so at some later date the payee could find their name on this list, and realize they were entitled to the funds. There would then be a process by which the payee could claim the funds from the state. Usually the state keeps any interest earned on the money. As far as I know, there typically wouldn't be any way for you, the person who originated the payment, to collect the money after escheatment. (Before escheatment, if you have the uncashed check in your possession, you can usually return it to the bank and have it refunded to you.) I had trouble finding an authoritative source explaining this, but a number of informal sources (found by Googling "cashier check escheatment") seem to agree that this is generally how it works. Here is the web site for a law firm, saying that in California an uncashed cashier's check escheats to the state after 3 years. Until escheatment occurs, the recipient can cash the check at any time. I don't think that cashier's checks become "stale" like personal checks do, and there isn't any situation in which the funds would automatically revert to you. |
If accepting more than $10K in cash for a used boat, should I worry about counterfeiting? | I'd not do business under these terms. A bill of sale needs a signature, right? Your signature is your word, and your word is your bond. I wouldn't participate in such a fraud, nor would I accept this sum of cash, who knows its origins? |
Sites to obtain historical chart of currency exchange rates? | OANDA has a free online tool (a Java applet) that will do what you're asking. Description: Currency Graph FXGraph: Plot the change between two currencies over any time period Make a customized graph of historical exchange rates for two of over 190 currencies, for any time period since 1990. [...] Visit Currency Graph | OANDA. |
How to calculate stock price (value) based on given values for equity and debt? | I'll give you my quick and dirty way to value a company: A quick and dirty valuation could be: equity + 10 times profit. This quick way protects you from investing in companies in debt, or losing money. To go more in-depth you need to assess future profit, etc. I recommend the book from Mary Buffett about Warren Buffett's investing style. |
If you want to trade an equity that reflects changes in VIX, what is a good proxy for it? | There is no good proxy for VIX, because it is a completely made-up value. Most listed options trade on an underlying security. I can therefore choose to buy either the stock, or a future or option on that stock. In this way, the future and option are derivatives in that they derive their value (in part) based on something else, in this case the stock price as of now. VIX is a different entity altogether. It is based on the volatility of the market, using "market expectation of near term volatility conveyed by stock index option prices". But the FAQ goes on to state that they are adding factors into the formula. So right away there is no one equity/stock that you can hold that will necessarily match the VIX in any significant way, because it is not directly based on stocks, but indirectly through other options and computations. In effect, therefore, the VIX in indeed only available through its options, and is not observable (tradable) in and of itself. |
What's an economic explanation for why greeting cards are so expensive? | As one answer points out, people buying greeting cards care little about whether they cost 25 cents or $5. Those are both small amounts of money and it's not something you buy often---also people feel the need to spend money because it's a gift. On the supplier side, it should be noted that the cost of cards has little to do with the paper they are printed on. There is an expectation that cards are new and unique...something the buyer and recipient have never seen. So they have writers and graphic designers constantly cranking out a large variety of cards and replacing existing cards with new ones, of which only a small number get sold before they move to the next model. Relatively speaking, there is a lot of human effort per thousand cards sold. Then of course there is the real estate they occupy in the store (disproportionate to a bunch of pieces of paper) and other retail, marketing, and distribution costs. I'm not saying margins are particularly thin, but if they were crazy high we probably would see more entry as you suggest. |
Do I even need credit cards? | You don't need a credit card anymore than you need a TV or a car. There might be many circumstances where a credit card is a convenience, there might be things you give up because you don't have a credit card. There are even some upsides to a well managed card account. But no, you don't need it. |
Trouble sticking to a budget when using credit cards for day to day transactions? | Discipline. If you have to have a hard limit on your account that prevents you from spending - credit cards are not for you. If you can discipline yourself not to make purchases in excess of your budget even if the plastic technically allows it - then you can go on using the credit card. Make sure to stay on top of your spendings by frequently checking your current activity on the card (on line, don't wait for statements), and making sure you're below the limit you have set for your budget. Mint.com visualizes your spendings and shows where you are with regards to your preset budgets on various types of spendings, you should consider using it as an aid. |
What's a good personal finance management web app that I can use in Canada? | Yodlee will also work. I asked a similar question (and provided answers) here. Thrive, so far, is the best in my opinion. Their tech support is top notch and their UI is far superior to Yodlee's (which provides the backend for Mint). |
A calculator that takes into account portfolio rebalancing? | Note that if 1) The stock prices are continuously differentiable (they aren't) 2) You rebalance continuously in the absence of trading fees and taxes then the return fraction (future price / original price) will be the geometric mean of the return fractions for each investment. If you don't rebalance then the return fraction will be the arithmetic mean. But the arithmetic mean is ALWAYS greater than or equal to the geometric mean, so continuous rebalancing in the case of continuously differentiable prices will always hurt you, even abscent trading costs/taxes. Any argument in favor of blind rebalancing which does not somehow fail in the continuously differentiable case is simply wrong. See https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/38536036/to%20karim.pdf -JT |
First job: Renting vs get my parents to buy me a house | Firstly, I'm going to do what you said and analyze your question taking your entire family's finances into account. That means giving you an answer that maximizes your family's total wealth rather then just your own. If instead of that your question really was, should I let my parents buy me a house and live rent free, then obviously you should do that (assuming your parents can afford it and you aren't taking advantage people who need to be saving for retirement and not wasting it on a 25 y/o who should be able to support him / herself). This is really an easy question assuming you are willing to listen to math. Goto the new york times rent vs buy calculator and plug in the numbers: http://www.nytimes.com/interactive/2014/upshot/buy-rent-calculator.html Firstly, if you do what you say you want to do buy the house all cash and live there for 4 years, it would be the equivalent of paying 1151 / month in rent once you factor in transaction costs, taxes, opportunity costs, etc. Take a look at the calculator, it's very detailed. This is why you should never buy houses all cash (unless its a negotiating tactic in a hot market, and even then you should refi after). Mortgage rates are super low right now, all that money sitting in the house is appreciating at maybe the rate of inflation (assuming the house value isn't going down which it can very easily do if you don't maintain it, another cost you need to factor in). Instead, you could be invested in the stock market getting 8%, the lost opportunity cost there is huge. I'm not even considering your suggestion that you hang onto the house after you move out in 4 years. That's a terrible idea. Investment properties should be at a maximum value of 10x the yearly rent. I wouldn't pay more then 72K for a house / apartment that rents for only 600 / month (and even then I would look for a better deal, which you can find if you time things right). Don't believe me? Just do the numbers. Renting your 200K house for 600 / month is 7200 / year. Figure you'll need to spend 1% / year (I'm being optimistic here) on maintanence / vacancy (and I'm not even considering your time dealing with tenants). Plus another 1% or so on property tax. That's 4K / year, so your total profit is 3200 which is a return of only 1.6% on your 200K. You can get 1% in an ally savings account for comparison. Really you are much better off investing in a diversified portfolio. You only need 6 months living expenses in cash, so unless your family is ridicuouly wealthy (In which case you should be asking your financial planner what to do and not stack exchange), I have no idea why your parents have 200K sitting around in a savings account earning 0. Open a vanguard account for them and put that money in VTI and your family will be much better off 5 years from now then if you buy that money pit (err house). If risk is a concern, diversify more. I have some money invested with a robo advisor. They do charge a small fee, but it's set it and forget it with auto diversification and tax loss harvesting. Bottom line is, get that money invested in something, having it sitting in a bank account earning 0 is probably the second worst thing you could do with next to buying this house. |
What is the opposite of a sunk cost? A “sunk gain”? | The opposite of a cost is an investment. Buying a car is an expense, usually a sunk cost, whereas purchasing real-estate, e.g. productive farmland, is an investment. (Some investments are wasting assets, as the value decreases over time, but they are still investments with market value, not costs.) "Sunk cost" isn't a fallacy. It just means an expenditure that one cannot expect to recoup. The action item is, "Don't throw good money after bad." The opposite of a sunk cost is an investment. |
Currently a Microsoft Money user on PC, need a replacement suitable for Mac | I switched from Quicken for Mac to Moneydance, and have not regretted it. I see only one weakness in MD compared with Quicken: its reporting is not very good. Your information is all there and well organized, but sometimes it's hard work to extract it in a convenient form. Of course a lot depends on what you need from the application, but I strongly recommend you take a look at MD before deciding. |
Debit card funds on preauthorization hold to paypal: can it be used for another transaction? | You said the hold would last a week. That's your answer. No you can't spend it again until the hold clears. |
Any advantage to exercising ISO's in company that is not yet public? | As I recall from the documentation presented to me, any gain over the strike price from an ISO stock option counts as a long term capital gain (for tax purposes) if it's held from 2 years from the date of grant and 1 year from the date of exercise. If you're planning to take advantage of that tax treatment, exercising your options now will start that 1-year countdown clock now as well, and grant you a little more flexibility with regards to when you can sell in the future. Of course, no one's renewed the "Bush tax cuts" yet, so the long-term capital gains rate is going up, and eventually it seems they'll want to charge you Medicare on those gains as well (because they can... ), soo, the benefit of this tax treatment is being reduced... lovely time to be investing, innnit? |
Creating a Limited company while still fully employed | I was just thinking ahead, can I apply for Limited company now, while fully time employed, and not take any business until I get a contract. Yes. You can open as many companies you want(assuming you are sane). There is no legal provisions regarding who can open a company. What happens if I create a company and it has no turnover at all? Does this complicate things later? After you open a company, you have to submit your yearly statements to Companies House, whether you have a billion pounds turnover or 0. If you claim VAT that has also to be paid after you register for VAT. VAT registration is another registration different from opening a limited company. Is it the same if I decided to take a 1,2 or x month holiday and the company again will not incur any turnover? Turnover is year end, so at the year end you have to submit your yearly results, whether you took a 12 month holiday or a week's holiday. Is it a OK to do this in foresight or should I wait weeks before actually deciding to search for contracts. No need to open a limited company now, if you are so paranoid. Opening a company in UK takes 5 minutes. So you can open a company after landing a contract. |
Should I pay off my credit card online immediately or wait for the bill? | It does not matter. Your credit score is affected by late payments, by credit usage and by age of credit. DO NOT PAY LATE. Paying early is only good in that it means you don't pay late. Your credit usage is calculated by percentage of the credit you have that you actually use. Keep your usage to under 20% of your limit and you look great as a credit risk as you have lots of buffer. |
How to calculate the number of months until a loan is paid off (given principal, APR and payment amount)? | The formula for determining the number of payments (months) you'll need to make on your loan is: where i=monthly interest rate (annual rate / 12), A=loan amount (principal), and P=monthly payment. To determine the total interest that you will pay, you can use the following formula: where P=monthly payment, N=number of payments (from above formula), and A=loan amount (principal). A quick example: using the numbers in the screenshot above ($10,000 loan, $500 monthly payment, 10% APR), the number of payments ends up to be 21.97 (which means that payment number 22 is slightly less than the rest). In the second formula, you take that number times your $500 payment and determine that you have paid $10,984.81 over the course of the entire loan period. Subtracting the principal, you have paid $984.81 in total interest. On your spreadsheet, the function you are looking for is NPER: NPER(rate, payment_amount, present_value, [future_value, end_or_beginning]) rate - The interest rate. (This should be the monthly rate, or the annual rate divided by 12.) payment_amount - The amount of each payment made. (For a loan payment, this should be a negative number.) present_value - The current value of the annuity. (The initial principal of the loan) future_value - [ OPTIONAL ] - The future value remaining after the final payment has been made. (This should be 0, the default if omitted.) end_or_beginning - [ OPTIONAL - 0 by default ] - Whether payments are due at the end (0) or beginning (1) of each period. |
Should I be claiming more than 1 exemption? | It's not possible to determine whether you can "expect a refund" or whether you are claiming the right number of exemptions from the information given. If your wife were not working and you did not do independent contracting, then the answer would be much simpler. However, in this case, we must also factor in how much your contracting brings in (since you must pay income tax on that, as well as Medicare and, probably, Social Security), whether you are filing jointly or separately, and your wife's income from her business. There are also other factors such as whether you'll be claiming certain child care expenses, and certain tax credits which may phase out depending on your income. If you can accurately estimate your total household income for the year, and separate that into income from wages, contracting, and your wife's business, as well as your expenses for things like state and local income and property taxes, then you can make a very reasonable estimate about your total tax burden (including the self-employment taxes on your non-wage income) and then determine whether you are having enough tax withheld from your paycheck. Some people may find that they should have additional tax withheld to compensate for these expenses (see IRS W-4 Line #6). |
Understanding the phrase “afford to lose” better | The way I approach "afford to lose", is that you need to sit down and figure out the amount of money you need at different stages of your life. I can look at my current expenses and figure out what I will always roughly be paying - bills, groceries, rent/mortgage. I can figure out when I want to retire and how much I want to live on - I generally group 401k and other retirement separately to what I want to invest. With these numbers I can figure out how much I need to save to achieve this goal. Maybe you want to purchase a house in 5 years - figure out the rough down payment and include that in your savings plan. Continue for all capital purchases that you can think you would aim for. Subtract your income from this and you have the amount of money you have greater discretion over. Subtracting current liabilities (4th of July holiday... christmas presents) and you have the amount you could "afford to lose". As to the asset allocation you should look at, as others have mentioned that the younger you the greater your opportunity is to recoup losses. Personally I would disagree - you should have some plan for the investment and use that goal to drive your diversification. |
Small withdrawals from IRA | First - Welcome to Money.SE. You gave a lot of detail, and it's tough to parse out the single question. Actually, you have multiple issues. $1300 is what you need to pay the tax? In the 25% bracket plus 10% penalty, you have a 65% net amount. $1300/.65 = Exactly $2000. You withdraw $2000, have them (the IRA holder) withhold $700 in federal tax, and you're done. All that said, don't do it. Nathan's answer - payment plan with IRS - is the way to go. You've shared with us a important issue. Your budget is running too tight. We have a post here, "the correct order of investing" which provides a great guideline that applies to most visitors. You are missing the part that requires a decent sized emergency fund. In your case, calling it that, may be a misnomer, as the tax bill isn't an unexpected emergency, but something that should have been foreseeable. We have had a number of posts here that advocate the paid in full house. And I always respond that the emergency fund comes first. With $70K of income, you should have $35K or so of liquidity, money readily available. Tax due in April shouldn't be causing you this grief. Please read that post I linked and others here to help you with the budgeting issue. Last - You are in an enviable position, A half million dollars, no mortgage, mid 40s. Easily doing better than most. So, please forgive the soapbox tone of the above, it was just my "see, that's what I'm talking about" moment from my tenure here. |
Looking for a good source for Financial Statements | The best source of financial statements would be from the company in question. On corporate websites of public listed companies, you can find such financial statements uploaded in the Investor's Relations section of their website. If their company does not have an online presence, another alternative would be to go to the website of the exchange the company is trading in (e.g. NYSE or NASDAQ) for financial data. |
Is the stock market too risky for long term retirement funds? Why should a 20- or 30-something person invest in stocks? | Look. Here's a graph of the S&P 500. It's up 1200% since the start of the 70's, our late recession notwithstanding. You're not going to get that kind of return on bonds or commodities or savings accounts. (Maybe real estate stands a chance, if your real estate wasn't in, say, Detroit. It's not as easy to diversify real estate...) People in their 20's who have plenty of time before they need to spend their retirement money invest in the stock market exactly because they're long-term and can withstand these dips just by waiting them out, and earn a ton of money. People approaching their 60's transition their portfolio to bonds so that a market crash won't wipe them out. |
Why not just invest in the market? | Perhaps someone has an investment objective different than following the market. If one is investing in stocks with an intent on getting dividend income then there may be other options that make more sense than owning the whole market. Secondly, there is Slice and Dice where one may try to find a more optimal investment idea by using a combination of indices and so one may choose to invest 25% into each of large-cap value, large-cap growth, small-cap value and small-cap growth with an intent to pick up benefits that have been seen since 1927 looking at Fama and French's work. |
Finding stocks following performance of certain investor, like BRK.B for Warren Buffet | A couple points, first you don't point out what investors you want to invest with, and second BRK.B does not track anything; it is just a very small slice of his entire holdings BRK.A minus the voting rights. One solid way to go would be to buy BRK.B and also a tech ETF like QQQ, or XLK, ..or both. |
If there's no volume discount, does buying in bulk still make sense? | To Rich Seller's point, we live 1/2 gallon of gas and 30 minute round trip from the supermarket. For the items that are non-perishable, such as bathroom or facial tissue, paper towels, shampoo,soap, toothpaste, etc, there's value in never running out of it. (@JohnFx - your point is well taken. When my daughter was a toddler, I found her covered in band-aids. One tiny scratch, 9 band-aids. My wife asked why I was concerned, we had hundreds in the pantry. I can see how some items might just encourage over-use) |
Cashing a cheque on behalf of someone else | If the cheque is not crossed, then your friend can write "payable to [your name]" above his signature when he endorses it. If it is crossed, you'll have to deposit it into his account. Given that one can deposit cheques at ATMs, this shouldn't require his presence. Just make sure he endorses it before you leave! It also might take a few more days to clear. |
How do you find out who the investors are in a U.S. stock? e.g. how ownership may be concentrated? | Companies absolutely know who ALL their shareholders are. Ownership is filed on Form 3/4 and in 10-Q/Ks. Look there. Guidelines for required disclosure are as follows: 1) Individuals must disclose when their ownership exceeds 5%; 2) Non-individual legal entities (read: companies; e.g. a hedge fund) must disclose when their ownership exceeds 10% (Form 13-F); and 3) All Officers and Directors Notice the word "required." For example, a entity (individual/company) may file "confidentiality letter" (which allows them to delay disclosing ownership) with the SEC as they are building a position. So at any given point in time the information that is publicaly available may not be "up-to-date." And in all cases beneficial owner(ship). |
How to manage paying expenses when moving to a weekly pay schedule and with a pay increase? | This is really just a matter of planning. It's good that you don't want the train to go off the rails but really you just need to budget your fixed expenses. I do this by having two checking accounts. One account gets a direct deposit to cover all of my fixed expenses, the other is my regular checking account. Take your rent and other fixed expenses, if you have any, and total them. Take that total and divide by four. That's how much of each check you should be socking away in to the separate account. Additionally, with a 30% pay increase you can probably start a savings account. You should start to establish an emergency fund so this really never becomes a problem. Take 10% of your pay and put it in savings, this will still leave you with a healthy pay increase to enjoy but you'll keep some of your money for yourself too. |
What is the PEG ratio? How is the PEG ratio calculated? How is the PEG ratio useful for stock investing? | PEG is Price to Earnings Growth. I've forgotten how it's calculated, I just remember that a PEG ratio of 1-2 is attractive by Graham & Dodd standards. |
How to bet against the London housing market? | While I am not an advocate of shorting anything (unlimited downside, capped upside), you can: |
How do currency markets work? What factors are behind why currencies go up or down? | According to Soros in "The Alchemy of Finance", exchange rates fluctuations are mostly influenced by: (sorry I do not have the quote here, and I am paraphrasing from the top of my head what I read about a week ago). I mention his point of view as he is one of the most successful hedge fund manager ever, proved his skills, and dealt a lot with currencies. This is not just theory as he actively used the above points when managing his fund (as explained in the book). What I find interesting is that, according to him, the fundamental reason (the balance of trade) is not the most influential. Speculation on future value of currencies is the most influential, and these can set trends that can last years. Also it is key to notice that Soros thought foreign exchange markets are "wrong" most of the time, just like he thought stock markets are "wrong" most of the time (a point on which Warren Buffet and Jim Rogers also agree from my understanding). |
Credit rating in Germany | The SCHUFA explicitly says on their website that their scoring system is a secret. However, if your goal is to be credit-worthy for example to get financing for a house or a car or whatever, just pay any loans and your credit card back on time and you'll be fine. There is no need to build a credit history. I just got a mortgage on a new house without any real credit history. I have one credit card which I only use on vacations because some countries don't take my debit card, and I always put money on it before I use it, so I've technically never borrowed money from a bank at all. My banker looked at my SCHUFA with me and we saw that there was nothing in there except for the credit card, which has a 500€ limit and if I maxed it out, the monthly interest would be 6,80€ so he added that 6,80€ to my expenses calculation and that was it. If you're having trouble getting a loan and you don't know why, you can ask the SCHUFA for the data they have on you and you can correct any mistakes they might have made. Sometimes, especially when you have the same full name and birth date as somebody else, the SCHUFA does get things mixed up and you have to sort it out. |
What are the differences between a REIT and an MLP? | A REIT is a real estate investment trust. It is a company that derives most of its gross income from and holds most of its assets in real estate investments, which, in this case, include either real property, mortgages, or both. They provide a way for investors to get broad exposure in a real estate market without going to buy a bunch of properties themselves. It also provides diversification within the real estate segment since REITs will often (but not necessarily) have either way more properties than an individual could get or have very large properties (like a few resorts) that would be too expensive for any one investor. By law, they must pay at least 90% of their taxable income as dividends to investors, so they typically have a good dividend rate (possibly but not necessarily) at the expense of growth of the stock price. Some of those dividends may be tax advantaged and some will not. An MLP is a master limited partnership. These trade on the exchange like corporations, but they are not corporations. (Although often used in common language as synonyms, corporation and company are not the same thing. Corporation is one way to organize a company under the law.) They are partnerships, and when you buy a share you become a partner in the company. This is an alternative form of ownership to being a shareholding. In this case you are a limited partner, which means that you have limited liability as with stock. The shares may appreciate or not, just like a stock, and you can generally sell them back to the market for a capital gain or loss under the same rules as a stock. The main difference here from a practical point of view is taxes: Partnerships (of any type) do no pay tax - Instead their income and costs are passed to the individual partners, who must then include it on their personal returns (Form 1040, Schedule E). The partnership will send each shareholder a Schedule K-1 form at tax time. This means you may have "phantom income" that is taxable even though cash never flowed through your hands since you'll have to account for the income of the partnership. Many partnerships mitigate this by making cash distributions during the year so that the partners do actually see the cash, but this is not required. On the other hand, if it does happen, it's often characterized as a return of capital, which is not taxable in the year that you receive it. A return of capital reduces your cost basis in the partnership and will eventually result in a larger capital gain when you sell your shares. As with any investment, there are pros and cons to each investment type. Of the two, the MLP is probably less like a "regular" stock since getting the Schedule K-1 may require some extra work at tax time, especially if you've never seen one before. On the other hand, that may be worth it to you if you can find one that's appreciating in value and still returning capital at a good rate since this could be a "best of everything" situation where you defer tax and - when you eventually do pay, you pay at favorable capital gains rates - but still manage to get your cash back in hand before you sell. (In case not clear, my comments about tax are specific to the US. No idea how this is treated elsewhere.) By real world example, I guess you meant a few tickers in each category? You can find whole lists online. I just did a quick search ("list of MLP" and "list of REIT"), found a list, and have provided the top few off of the first list that I found. The lists were alphabetical by company name, so there's no explicit or implicit endorsement of these particular investments. Examples of REIT: Examples of MLP: |
Can one use dollar cost averaging to make money with something highly volatile? | As you mentioned in the title, what you're asking about comes down to volatility. DCA when purchasing stock is one way of dealing with volatility, but it's only profitable if the financial instrument can be sold higher than your sunk costs. Issues to be concerned with: Let's suppose you're buying a stock listed on the NYSE called FOO (this is a completely fake example). Over the last six days, the average value of this stock was exactly $1.00Note 1. Over six trading days you put $100 per day into this stockNote 2: At market close on January 11th, you have 616 shares of FOO. You paid $596.29 for it, so your average cost (before fees) is: $596.29 / 616 = $0.97 per share Let's look at this including your trading fees: ($596.29 + $30) / 616 = $1.01 per share. When the market opens on January 12th, the quote on FOO could be anything. Patents, customer wins, wars, politics, lawsuits, press coverage, etc... could cause the value of FOO to fluctuate. So, let's just roll with the assumption that past performance is consistent: Selling FOO at $0.80 nets: (616 * $0.80 - $5) - ($596.29 + $30) = $123.49 Loss Selling FOO at $1.20 nets: (616 * $1.20 - $5) - ($596.29 + $30) = $107.90 Profit Every day that you keep trading FOO, those numbers get bigger (assuming FOO is a constant value). Also remember, even if FOO never changes its average value and volatility, your recoverable profits shrink with each transaction because you pay $5 in fees for every one. Speaking from experience, it is very easy to paper trade. It is a lot harder when you're looking at the ticker all day when FOO has been $0.80 - $0.90 for the past four days (and you're $300 under water on a $1000 portfolio). Now your mind starts playing nasty games with you. If you decide to try this, let me give you some free advice: Unless you have some research (such as support / resistance information) or data on why FOO is a good buy at this price, let's be honest: you're gambling with DCA, not trading. END NOTES: |
Are capitalization rate and net profit margin the same thing? | Both of these terms do refer to your profit; they're just different ways of evaluating it. First, your definition of capitalization rate is flipped. As explained here, it should be: On the other hand, as explained here: So cap rate is like a reverse unit cost approach to comparing two investments. If house A costs $1M and you'll make $50K (profit) from it yearly, and house B costs $1.33M and you'll make $65K (profit) from it yearly, then you can compute cap rates to see that A is a more efficient investment from the point of view of income vs. amount-of-money-you-have-stuck-in-this-investment-and-unavailable-for-use-elsewhere. Profit margin, on the other hand, cares more about your ongoing expenses than about your total investment. If it costs less to maintain property B than it does to maintain property A, then you could have something like: So B is a more efficient investment from the point of view of the fraction of your revenue you actually get to keep each year. Certainly you could think of the property's value as an opportunity cost and factor that into the net profit margin equation to get a more robust estimate of exactly how efficient your investment is. You can keep piling more factors into the equation until you've accounted for every possible facet of your investment. This is what accountants and economists spend their days doing. :-) |
Should I pay off a 0% car loan? | Pay it off. If you do so, you have the liberty to drop or reduce a portion of your collision auto insurance coverage (keeping uninsured motorist). This could potentially save you a lot more than 20 bucks over the next six months. |
Opening a bank account with cash: How should bills be presented? | In the US, banks, businesses and the government stack cash. That's how you should present it to them. |
Buying a house 50/50 | I don't like it using percentages makes no sense. Find out what market value is for rent and pay 1/2 of that to your partner, adjust annually. You partner should be protected from inflation if he is going to invest in real estate. |
Where can I find open source portfolio management software? | I've just recently launched an open source wealth management platform - wealthbot.io ... "Webo" is mostly targeted at RIA's to help the manage multiple portfolios, etc. Take a look at the demo at demo.wealthbot.io, you'll also find links to github, etc. there. It's a rather involved project, but if you are looking for use cases of rebalancing, portfolio accounting, custodian integration, tax loss harvesting, and many other features available at some of the popular robo-advisors, you might find it interesting. |
Can zero-coupon bonds go down in price? | Let's say today you buy the bond issued by StateX at 18$. Let's say tommorow morning the TV says that StateX is going towards default (if it happens it won't give you back not even the 18$ you invested). You (and others that bought the same bond like you) will get scared and try to sell the bond, but a potential buyer won't buy it for 18$ anymore they will risk maximum couple of bucks, therefor the price of your bond tomorrow is worth 2$ and not 18 anymore. Bond prices (even zero coupon ones) do fluctuate like shares, but with less turbolence (i.e. on the same period of time, ups and downs are smaller in percentage compared to shares) EDIT: Geo asked in the comment below what happens to the bond the FED rises the interest. It' very similar to what I explained above. Let's say today you buy the bond just issued by US treasury at 50$. Today the FED rewards money at 2%, and the bond you bought promised you a reward of 2% per year for 10 years (even if it's zero coupon, it will give you almost the same reward of one with coupons, the only difference is that it will give you all the money back at once, that is when the bond expires). Let's say tommorow morning the TV says that FED decided to rise the interest rates, and now on it lends money rewarding a wonderful 4% to investors. US treasury will also have to issue bonds at 4%. You can obviously keep your bond until expiration (and unless US goes default you will get back all your money until the last cent), but if you decide to sell your bond, you will find out that people won't be willing to pay 50$ anymore because on the market they can now buy the same type of bond (for the same period of time, 10 years) that give them 4% per year and not a poor 2% like yours. So people will be willing to pay maximum 40$ for your bond or less. |
What is the Difference between Life Insurance and ULIP? | ULIP insurance plan ULIP is Unit Linked Insurance Plan. The premium you pay, a small part goes towards covering life insurance. The Balance is invested into Stock Markets. Most ULIP would give you an option to choose from Debt Funds [100% safe buy low returns 5-7%] or Equity [High Risks, Returns can be around 15%]. Or a mix of both. ULIP are not a good way to save money. There are quite a few hidden fees that actually reduce the return. So notionally even if returns shown are great, in effect it is quite less. For example the premium you pay in first year, say Rs 10,000/- Rs 2,500/- goes towards commission. And say Rs 100 goes towards insurance. Balance Rs 7,400/- units are purchased in your account. Even if these grow by 20%, you are still in loss. Ofcousre, the commissions go down year after year and stop at 5%. Then there is fund management fees that you don't get to see. There is maintenance fee that is deduced from your balance. Thus the entire method of charging is not transparent. Life insurance from LIC There are broadly 2 types of Life Insurance plans Money Back / Endowment Plan. The concept here is again same, you pay a premium and part of it goes toward Insurance. The balance LIC invests in safe bonds. Every year a bonus is declared; generally less than Bank rate. At the end of the plan you get more than what you paid in premium. However if you had kept the same in Bank FD, you would have got more money back. So if you die, your nominee would get Insurance plus bonus. If you survive you get all the accumulated bonus. Pure Term Plan. Here the premium is quite less for the sum insured. Here if you die, your nominee would get insurance. If you survive you don't get anything. |
What is the purpose of property tax? | Property taxes, where they exist, are generally levied by cities, counties and other local-level administrative bodies like MUDs, and are the primary source of revenue at these levels of government. These taxes pay the lion's share of the expenses for basic services provided by a city or county: There are federal dollars, other revenue sources (State lottery revenues often go toward public schools for instance), and "usage fees" (vehicle registration, utility bills, toll roads) at play as well, but a lot of that money covers larger-scale infrastructure development (freeways/interstates) and specialized "earmarks" (political backscratching involving this bridge or that dam in a Congresscritter's home district, a few national initiatives from the President's budget like first-responder technology upgrades for improved disaster/terrorism readiness). Property taxes are the main funding for the day-to-day government operations at the most visible level to the average resident. The theory behind using a property tax instead of some other form of taxation (like income) is that the value of the property and the quality of services provided to the resident(s) of that property are interrelated; the property is valuable in part because the infrastructure is well-maintained and nearby schools/hospitals are good, and by the same token, affluent residents expect high-quality services. Property taxes are also easier to levy, because most of the work can be done by the tax assessor; monitor recent sale prices, do drive-bys through neighborhoods, come up with a number and send the resident the bill. That's opposed to sales taxes which businesses operating in the jurisdiction have to calculate, collect and turn over, or income taxes which require residents to fill out paperwork to calculate how much they owe. The justification is eminent domain. It's very simple; when you buy land in the U.S. and a State thereof, you are still a citizen and/or resident of that State and the U.S., and subject to their laws. You're not creating your own country when you buy a house. As such, the government charges you for the facilities and services they provide in your area and your State, which are then your privilege to use. Obviously roads aren't free; a one-mile stretch behind my house is costing the county $15 million to expand it from 2-lane to 4-lane. Here's the kicker; you've already been paying these taxes. You think your landlord's just going to take the property taxes for the whole apartment complex on the chin? He's out to make money, and doing that requires charging a sufficient amount to cover costs, including taxes he incurs. You just never see "allocated property taxes" as an item on your rent statement, just like you don't see "allocated landowner mortgage", "allocated facilities maintenance", "allocated gross margin" etc. You know you're getting shafted, paying someone else's financing with a little extra on the side to boot. That's why you want a house. Unfortunately, not being able to pay these taxes is a grim reality for some people, old and young, and government generally doesn't go easy on delinquent homeowners. After medical bills and mortgage delinquency, property tax delinquency is the number three reason for bankruptcy, and only a mortgage or property tax delinquency can cause your home to be seized and sold. Well that and using it for criminal enterprise, but unless you're running a meth lab in your half-million-dollar home or financing it with coke money I wouldn't worry about that score. Retirement planners figure property taxes into cost of living, and they do often advise a downgrade from the 2-story house you raised your children in to something smaller (for many reasons, including lower taxes). There really isn't a way to structure a completely "pay-as-you-go" metropolitan area, and you wouldn't want to live in it if there were. Imagine every strip of asphalt in the county being a toll road where your transponder (TollTag, EZ-Pass, etc) or license plate was scanned and you were billed at each intersection. In addition to being a huge invasion of privacy, the cost to maintain this network (and your cost to use it) would skyrocket. Imagine 911 asking for a credit card number before dispatching police, fire or EMS (Ambulance services already do bill on a per-event basis, but you'd be surprised how few people pay and how little power a county EMS has to enforce collection; without a property tax and Medicaid to cover the difference, EMS service could not be provided in most counties). |
What does it mean “sell on ask” , “sell on bid” in stocks? | It's good to ask this question, because this is one of the fundamental dichotomies in market microstructure. At any time T for each product on a (typical) exchange there are two well-defined prices: At time T there is literally no person in the market who wants to sell below the ask, so all the people who are waiting to buy at the bid (or below) could very well be waiting there forever. There's simply no guarantee that any seller will ever want to part with their product for a lesser price than they think it's worth. So if you want to buy the product at time T you have a tough choice to make: you get in line at the bid price, where there's no guarantee that your request will ever be filled, and you might never get your hands on the product you decide that owning the product right now is more valuable to you than (ask - bid) * quantity, so you tell the exchange that you're willing to buy at the ask price, and the exchange matches you with whichever seller is first in line Now, if you're in the market for the long term, the above choice is completely immaterial to you. Who cares if you pay $10.00 * 1000 shares or $10.01 * 1000 shares when you plan to sell 30 years from now at $200 (or $200.01)? But if you're a day trader or anyone else with a very short time horizon, then this choice is extremely important: if the price is about to go up several cents and you got in line at the bid (and never got filled) then you missed out on some profit if you "cross the spread" to buy at the ask and then the price doesn't go up (or worse, goes down), you're screwed. In order to get out of the position you'll have to cross the spread again and sell at at most the bid, meaning you've now paid the spread twice (plus transaction fees and regulatory fees) for nothing. (All of the above also applies in reverse for selling at the ask versus selling at the bid, but most people like to learn in terms of buying rather than selling.) |
For the first time in my life, I'm going to be making real money…what should I do with it? | Fund your retirement accounts first. Even as an intern, it is still worthwhile to open a Roth IRA and start contributing to it. See my answer to a similar question: Best way to start investing, for a young person just starting their career? |
Freelance trading of products in India | For most goods there is no license required, unless you are trading in restricted goods. Remittance need to be routed via banks and they should comply with FMEA. Your Bank or a qualified CA can guide you. |
Buying an option in the money, at the money, or out of the money | I look for buying a call option only at the money, but first understand the background above: Let's suppose X stock is being traded by $10.00 and it's January The call option is being traded by $0.20 with strike $11.00 for February. (I always look for 2% prize or more) I buy 100 stocks by $10.00 each and sell the option, earning $0.20 for each X stock. I will have to deliver my stocks by $11.00 (strike value agreed). No problem for me here, I took the prize plus the gain of $1.00. (continuing from item 3) I still can sell the option for the next month with strike equal or higher than that I bought. For instance, I can sell a call option of strike $10.00 and it might be worth to deliver stocks by $10.00 and take the prize. (continuing from item 3) Probably, it won't be possible to sell a call option with strike at the price that I paid for the stock, but that's not a problem. At the end of the option life (in February), the strike was $11.00 but the stock's price is $8.00. I got the $0.20 as prize and my stocks are free for trade again. I'll sell the call option for March with strike $9.00 (taking around 2% of prize). Well, I don't want to sell my stocks by $9.00 and make loss, right? But I'm selling the call option anyway. Then I wait till the price of the stock gets near the strike value (almost ATM) and I "re-buy" the option sold (Example: [StockX]C9 where C means month = March) and sell again the call option with higher strike to April (Example [StockX]D10, where D means month = April) PS.: At item 9 there should be no loss between the action of "re-buy" and sell to roll-out to the next month. When re-buying it with the stock's price near the strike, option value for March (C9) will be lower than when selling it to April (D10). This isn't any rule to be followed, this is just a conservative (I think they call it hedge) way to handle options and stocks. Few free to make money according to your goals and your style. The perfect rule is the one that meet your expectation, don't take the generalized rules too serious. |
83(b) and long term capital gain | You should apply for 83(b) within 30 days. 10 months is too late, sorry. |
On paper I have 1 share in my company. How can I sell a smaller percentage of my company to another party? | Do a share split. Your initial 1 share each becomes 10 (or 100) shares each, then you can sell/gift/etc shares as needed. |
What should I do with my paper financial documents? | I won't add to the timelines, as I agree or don't care but my two cents are |
Is there a country that uses the term “dollar” for currency without also using “cents” as fractional monetary units? | Going through the list of economies that currently use the dollar, all of them list cents as a fractional unit. In Hong Kong and Taiwan, the 1/100 fractional unit is still called a cent, but it's no longer in circulation in coin form and only finds use in financial markets or electronic payments. In countries like Malaysia, the word "sen" is used as the translation of the word "cent", even though the word for the actual currency, "ringgit", isn't a translation of the word "dollar". A similar situation occurs in Panama. The local currency is called the balboa, and it's priced on par (1:1) with the US dollar. US banknotes are also accepted as legal tender, and Panamanians sometimes use the terms balboa/dollar interchangeably. The 1/100 subdivision of the balboa is the centésimo, which is merely a translation of cent. Like Malaysia, the fractional unit is called "cent" (or a translation) but the main unit isn't merely a translation of the word "dollar." On a historical note, the Spanish Dollar was subdivided into 8 reales in order to match the German thaler (the word that forms the basis for the English word "dollar"). |
What is the p/e ratio? | PE ratio is the current share price divided by the prior 4 quarters earnings per share. Any stock quote site will report it. You can also compute it yourself. All you need is an income statement and a current stock quote. |
Why do people buy insurance even if they have the means to overcome the loss? | Your basic point is correct; the savvy move is to use insurance only to cover losses that would be painful or catastrophic for you. Otherwise, self-insure. In the specific example of car insurance, you may be missing that it doesn't only cover replacement of the car, it also covers liability, which is a hundreds-of-thousands-of-dollars risk. The liability coverage may well be legally required; it may also be required as a base layer if you want to get a separate umbrella policy up to millions in liability. So you have to be very rich before this insurance stops making sense. In the US at least you can certainly buy car insurance that doesn't cover loss of the car, or that has a high deductible. And in fact, if you can afford to self-insure up to a high deductible, on average as you say that should be a good idea. Same is true of most kinds of insurance, a high deductible is best as long as you can afford it, unless you know you'll probably file a claim. (Health insurance in particular is weird in many ways, and one is that you often can estimate whether you'll have claims.) On our auto policy, the liability and uninsured motorist coverage is about 60% of the cost while damage to the car coverage is 40%. I'm sure this varies a lot depending on the value of your cars and how much you drive and driving record, etc. On an aging car the coverage for the car itself should get cheaper and cheaper since the car is worth less, while liability coverage would not necessarily get cheaper. |
Does receiving a 1099-MISC require one to file a tax return even if he normally would not be required to file? | Does he need to file a tax return in this situation? Will the IRS be concerned that he did not file even if he received a 1099? No. However, if you don't file the IRS may come back asking why, or "make up" a return for you assuming that the whole amount on the 1099-MISC is your net earnings. So in the end, I suspect you'll end up filing even though you don't have to, just to prove that you don't have to. Bottom line - if you have 1099 income (or any other income reported to the IRS that brings you over the filing threshold), file a return. |
Why does Warren Buffett say his fund performance, relatively, is likely to be better in a bear market than in a bull market? | Buffett is a value investor. His goal is to buy good companies when the market is overly worried and prices them below intrinsic value. When the market is highly priced it is much more difficult for him to find things that he thinks are at an attractive price. When people are very worried and the market has crashed, stocks are then priced below their intrinsic value and he can use the cash he keeps in the company to make attractive purchases. Remember that Buffett is not concerned with the ups and downs of the price of Berkshire Hathaway stock, he is concerned with the economic value of the assets that the company owns. So if all stock prices crash and he can buy things that are at bargain prices, he is happy no matter what Berkshire stock price does in the short run. One consequence of value investing is that because you are buying assets at bargain prices, the total value of your assets drops less in a bear market than the highly priced stuff that drives the major indexes. |
Ballpark salary equivalent today of “healthcare benefits” in the US? | As others have said, it depends entirely on what benefits are provided, and how much of the cost of those benefits is paid by the employer and how much is paid by the employee, and compare that to what it would cost to obtain the necessary/equivalent coverage without employer assistance. In my case, my employer pays more than $10,000 per year toward the cost of medical, dental, vision, disability, and life insurance for myself and my family. That's almost 20% of the average total household income in my state, so it is not an insignificant amount at all. |
Is there an advantage to keeping a liquid emergency fund if one also has an untapped line of credit? | People treat an emergency fund as some kind of ace-in-the-hole when it comes to financial difficulty, but it is only one of many sources of money that you can utilize. What is an emergency? First, you have to define what an emergency is. Is it a lost job? Is it an unplanned event (pregnancy, perhaps)? Is it a medical emergency? Is it the death of you or your spouse? Also, what does it mean to be unplanned? Is being so unhappy with your job that you give a 2-week notice an emergency? Is one month of planning an emergency? Two? Only you can answer these questions for yourself, but they significantly shape your financial strategy. Planning is highly dependent on your cashflow, and, for some people, it may take them a year to build enough savings to enable them to take 3 months off work. For others, they may be able to change their spending to build up enough for 3 months in 1 month. Also, you have to consider the length of the emergency. Job-loss is rarely permanent, but it's rarely short as well. The current average is 30.7 weeks: that's 7 months! Money in an Emergency There are six main places that people get money during a financial emergency: A good emergency strategy takes all six of these into account. Some emergencies may lean more on one source than the other. However, some of these are correlated. For example, in 2008, three things happened: the stock market crashed, unsecured debt dried up, and people faced financial emergency (lost jobs, cut wages). If you were dependent on a stock portfolio and/or a line of credit, you'd be up a creek, because the value of your investments suddenly decreased, and you can't really tap your now significantly limited line of credit. However, if you had a one or more of cash savings, unemployment income, and unemployment insurance, you would probably have been OK. Budgeting for an emergency When you say "financial emergency", most people think job loss. However, the most common cause of bankruptcy in the US is medical debt. Depending on your insurance situation, this could be a serious risk, or it may not be. People say you should have 3x-6x of your monthly income in savings because it's an easy, back-of-the-envelope way to handle most financial emergency risk, but it's not necessarily the most prudent strategy for you. To properly budget for an emergency, you need to fully take into account what emergencies you are likely to face, and what sources of financing you would have access to given the likely factors that led to that emergency. Generally, having a savings account with some amount of liquid cash is an important part of a risk-mitigation strategy. But it's not a panacea for every kind of emergency. |
How to return 4 - 6% on savings / investments with little / no management? | I'm assuming you mean 4-6% annually over 10-15 years. If you mean 4%-6% total return over 10 years then this question is easy just find your local country's 10Y bond and that should likely cover it (though barely if you are German). So 4%-6% annually is not a big stretch but it does require some risk and at least a bit of work. A fire-and-forget good mix would include (using index mutual funds or etfs) Some internet research and a one-time meeting with a financial adviser who is paid by you (not paid on commission) should help you set the right balance of these index funds and be a good check on what I'm advising. If you are willing to do a tiny bit more work it's well worth starting with a heavier weight on the riskier stocks and ex-European funds (more currency risk) and then every 2-3 years slowly move into safer stocks and Euro-based funds. With that tiny amount of extra work there you can make it much more likely that you will end within your 4-6% range while taking significantly less risk overall. |
Does girlfriend have too much savings, time to invest? | Congrats to your GF! "How much" depends a lot on how stable her income tends to be. If she has stable salary @ $20K plus $5K-$15K in contract work, then having a larger EF is important. If she has a consistent track record of pulling in $35K each year with contract work, then she may still need a somewhat higher emergency fund to tide her over between gigs. The rule of thumb is at least 3 months' expenses before you start investing for better returns. If she is reliant on contract work, then holding up to 6 months' expenses could be wise just in case she hits a slow patch with work. After that emergency fund is covered, she can look at investment opportunities with varying levels of risk & return: I would also recommend putting it down in writing "why" she's investing/saving. Is she saving up for an awesome vacation? Maybe that's why she really is so far above a normal EF. Does she want a new car? Maybe there's not really so much to spare. Bottom line: Assuming her monthly expenses are around $2K per month, she might have $4,000 to $5,000 that she could look to start investing "safely". |
How are Canada Universal Child Care Benefit (UCCB) & related tax measures changing in 2015? | The Child Care Expense Deduction (line 214) dollar limits will each increase by $1000, to new amounts of $8000 for children under 7 and $5000 for children age 7–16. Notes: As a tax deduction, your tax liability gets reduced at your marginal income tax rate, not the lowest tax rate (as would be the case for a tax credit). Yes, you still need receipts from your child care provider to support any claim. The non-refundable child tax credit a.k.a. amount for children under age 18 (line 367) introduced in 2007 is being eliminated starting in tax year 2015 coincident with the UCCB enhancement above. The credit could previously reduce tax liability by ~$340. The Family Tax Cut is being introduced and will be effective for tax year 2014. That is, when you file your 2014 income tax return in early 2015, you may be able to take advantage of this measure for income already earned in 2014. Provided a couple has at least one child under the age of 18, the Family Tax Cut will permit the transfer of up to $50,000 of taxable income from the higher income spouse's income tax return to the lower income spouse's return. While the potential transfer of $50,000 of taxable income to lower tax brackets sounds like a really big deal, the maximum tax relief is capped at $2000. |
Why would you ever turn down a raise in salary? | At least with US tax law where you only pay taxes at the higher rate for the income above the minimum for that tax bracket, you will always wind up ahead taking the raise if you are simply concerned with after tax (FICA) income. For example, assume you were making $8,350 (the top end of the 10% bracket in the US), and got a $100 raise, you would be taxed roughly as follows: After Tax Income Before Raise: $8,350 x (100% - 10%) After Tax Income After Raise: $8,350 x (100%-10%) + $100 x (100%-15%) You can easily see that the second number is always higher than the first as long as the raise is a positive amount (obviously). |
Why would a company have 2 listings on the same exchange? | Some companies like Royal Dutch Shell have multiple share classes to suit the tax regimes in Holland and the UK the A shares have dutch withholding tax applied and the B shares dont. Also some split capital investment trusts have multiple share classes http://www.trustnet.com/Education/Split.aspx?ms=1 |
Should I exclude bonds from our retirement investment portfolio if our time horizon is still long enough? | I've had the same thoughts recently and after reading Investing at Level 3 by James Cloonan I believe his thesis that for the passive investor you're giving up too much if you're not 100% in equities. He is clear to point out that you need to be well aware of your withdrawal horizons and has specific tactics for shifting the portfolio when you know you must have the money in the next five years and wouldn't want to pull money out when you're at a market low. The kicker for me was shifting your thought to a plotting a straight line of reasonable expectations on your return. Then you don't worry about how far down you are from your high (or up from your low) but you measure yourself against the expected return and you'll find some real grounding. You're investing for the long term so you're going to see 2-3 bear markets. That isn't the the time to get cold feet and react. Stay put and it will come back. The market gets back to the reasonable expectations very quickly as he confirms in all the bear markets and recessions of any note. He gives guidelines for a passive investing strategy to leverage this mentality and talks about venturing into an active strategy but doesn't go into great depth. So if you're looking to invest more passively this book may be enough to get you rolling with thinking differently than the traditional 70/30 split. |
Is 'days to cover' a useful metric in identifying the potential for a short squeeze? | SeekingAlpha has an article about short squeezes that states: The higher the number of days to cover means the possibility for a short squeeze is greater, and the potential size of the short squeeze is also greater Logically, this makes sense. A short squeeze occurs when a lack of supply meets excess demand for a stock, so the potential for a squeeze increases when supply and demand begin to get out of equilibrium. Think of two things that would cause the days to cover to increase and what effect they would have on supply and demand. The current short interest (numerator) increases. This implies that if some event triggers short sellers to cover their position, there are a higher number of short sellers who will need to do so. This heightens the chances that demand will exceed supply. The average daily volume (denominator) decreases. This implies that fewer investors are trading the stock, so if an event triggers short sellers to cover their positions, there might not be enough traders in the market willing to sell their shares. (Obviously, if a short-squeeze occurs, volume may increase because traders who were unwilling to sell their shares become willing). |
How to save money for future expenses | My answer will suck but it comes from someone who has been married: You can't control another person or convince them to do something. What you can do is identify what they value and show how saving money increases their opportunities in what they value, but understand that the person could see what you're saying as invalid too. If you're single and reading this, this is why you verify that the person has similar values to you. Think of it like someone who wants good gas mileage: you show them a car that gets 60MPG, and immediately they say, "Well, but that's not a cool car." So their value isn't the miles per gallon, and you may find the same is true with your spouse. India is paying more interest than the US and Europe in their savings accounts (I believe the benchmark interest rate is 7.5%), so - assuming your spouse values more money - showing him how to use money in savings to passively earn money might be a technique that works. But it may mean nothing to him because it's (1) not his actual value or (2) isn't enough to matter in his mind. In other words, this is all sales and whatever you do (and this is regardless of gender), don't manipulate, as in the long run that tends to build resentment. If there is a specific problem that you know he sees as a major issue and saving money can help, I'd recommend showing how savings would help with that problem. People generally like solutions to problems; just remember, what you think he sees as a problem may not be what he sees as a problem. This is why I chuckle when I see single people give married people advice; you can't just "convince the person enough" because you are not that person; we have to speak their language and we should be careful to avoid creating resentment. The part that sucks (or doesn't depending on who you ask) is that if we can't convince others to do it, we should do it ourselves. Either (1) earn money independently yourself when applicable (realizing that you are about to have a child and may be limited), or (2) save the money that you and your spouse have agreed that you're allotted, if this applies to your situation (a few spouses divide income even when one is an earner). |
How do I choose between buying a car or buying a plot of land in Pakistan? | “The plot of land definitely is going to give better results in long term.” Will it? Land is not guaranteed to go up in value. And a car can provide more employment opportunities for you. You need to look at your specific situation—with specific numbers—rather than using rules of thumb as hard guidelines. |
How to bet against IPOs? | There are 2 primary ways to bet against a stock if you think it will decline. The first is to short sell shares of that stock the second is to buy put options (I would also add that selling naked call options would also be a bet against but I don't believe that is as common as the other 2 mentioned methods). The problem with short selling an IPO is that you first have to borrow the shares you are going to sell. Since the shares are privately held prior to the IPO that can be problematic. Even after the IPO you may have to wait a bit before shares become available to borrow. The problem with options (either buying puts or seeking naked calls) is similar. Options are traded on a different exchange than the stock and they have their own requirements that a stock must meet to have options traded. Both of these problems eventually correct themselves however, not in time for you to catch the initial fall you seem to be looking for. |
What should my finances look like at 18? | If you're making big money at 18, you should be saving every penny you can in tax-advantaged retirement accounts. (If your employer offers it, see if you can do a Roth 401(k), as odds are good you'll be in a higher tax bracket at retirement than you are now and you will benefit from the Roth structure. Otherwise, use a regular 401(k). IRAs are also an option, but you can put more money into a 401(k) than you can into an IRA.) If you do this for a decade or two while you're young, you'll be very well set on the road to retirement. Moreover, since you think "I've got the money, why not?" this will actually keep the money from you so you can do a better job of avoiding that question. Your next concern will be post-tax money. You're going to be splitting this between three basic sorts of places: just plain spending it, saving/investing it in bank accounts and stock markets, or purchasing some other form of capital which will save you money or provide you with some useful capability that's worth money (e.g. owning a condo/house will help you save on rent - and you don't have to pay income taxes on that savings!) 18 is generally a little young to be setting down and buying a house, though, so you should probably look at saving money for a while instead. Open an account at Vanguard or a similar institution and buy some simple index funds. (The index funds have lower turnover, which is probably better for your unsheltered accounts, and you don't need to spend a bunch of money on mutual fund expense ratios, or spend a lot of time making a second career out of stock-picking). If you save a lot of your money for retirement now, you won't have to save as much later, and will have more income to spend on a house, so it'll all work out. Whatever you do, you shouldn't blow a bunch of money on a really fancy new car. You might consider a pretty-nice slightly-used car, but the first year of car ownership is distressingly close to just throwing your money away, and fancy cars only make it that much worse. You should also try to have some fun and interesting experiences while you're still young. It's okay to spend some money on them. Don't waste money flying first-class or spend tooo much money dining out, but fun/interesting/different experiences will serve you well throughout your life. (By contrast, routine luxury may not be worth it.) |
Purpose of having good credit when you are well-off? | Because even if you won the lottery, without at least some credit history you will have trouble renting cars and hotel rooms. I learned about the importance, and limitations of credit history when, in the 90's, I switched from using credit cards to doing everything with a debit card and checks purely for convenience. Eventually, my unused credit cards were not renewed. At that point in my life I had saved a lot and had high liquidity. I even bought new autos every 5 years with cash. Then, last decade, I found it increasingly hard to rent cars and sometimes even a hotel rooms with a debit card even though I would say they could precharge whatever they thought necessary to cover any expenses I might run. I started investigating why and found out that hotels and car rentals saw having a credit card as a proxy for low risk that you would damage the car or hotel room and not pay. So then I researched credit cards, credit reports, and how they worked. They have nothing about any savings, investments, or bank accounts you have. I had no idea this was the case. And, since I hadn't had cards or bought anything on credit in over 10 years there were no records in my credit files. Old, closed accounts had fallen off after 10 years. So, I opened a couple of secured credit cards with the highest security deposit allowed. They unsecured after a year or so. Then, I added several rewards cards. I use them instead of a debit card and always pay in full and they provide some cash back so I save money compared to just using a debit card. After 4 years my credit score has gone to 800+ even though I have never carried any debt and use the cards as if they were debit cards. I was very foolish to have stopped using credit cards 20 years ago but just had no idea of the importance of an established credit history. And note that establishing a great credit history does not require that you borrow money or take out loans for anything. just get credit cards and pay them in full each month. |
Quarterly dividends to monthly dividends | Technically you should take the quarterly dividend yield as a fraction, add one, take the cube root, and subtract one (and then multiple by the stock price, if you want a dollar amount per share rather than a rate). This is to account for the fact that you could have re-invested the monthly dividends and earned dividends on that reinvestment. However, the difference between this and just dividing by three is going to be negligible over the range of dividend rates that are realistically paid out by ordinary stocks. |
MasterCard won't disclose who leaked my credit card details | File a John Doe lawsuit, "plaintiff to be determined", and then subpoena the relevant information from Mastercard. John Doe doesn't countersue, so you're pretty safe doing this. But it probably won't work. Mastercard would quash your subpoena. They will claim that you lack standing to sue anyone because you did not take a loss (which is a fair point). They are after the people doing the hacking, and the security gaps which make the hacking possible. And how those gaps arise among businesses just trying to do their best. It's a hard problem. And I've done the abuse wars professionally. OpSec is a big deal. You simply cannot reveal your methods or even much of your findings, because that will expose too much of your detection method. The ugly fact is, the bad guys are not that far from winning, and catching them depends on them unwisely using the same known techniques over and over. When you get a truly novel technique, it costs a fortune in engineering time to unravel what they did and build defenses against it. If maybe 1% of attacks are this, it is manageable, but if it were 10%, you simply cannot staff an enforcement arm big enough - the trained staff don't exist to hire (unless you steal them from Visa, Amex, etc.) So as much as you'd like to tell the public, believe me, I'd like to get some credit for what I've done -- they just can't say much or they educate the bad guys, and then have a much tougher problem later. Sorry! I know how frustrating it is! The credit card companies hammered out PCI-DSS (Payment Card Industry Data Security Standards). This is a basic set of security rules and practices which should make hacking unlikely. Compliance is achievable (not easy), and if you do it, you're off the hook. That is one way Amy can be entirely not at fault. Example deleted for length, but as a small business, you just can't be a PCI security expert. You rely on the commitments of others to do a good job, like your bank and merchant account salesman. There are so many ways this can go wrong that just aren't your fault. As to the notion of saying "it affected Amy's customers but it was Doofus the contractor's fault", that doesn't work, the Internet lynch mob won't hear the details and will kill Amy's business. Then she's suing Mastercard for false light, a type of defamtion there the facts are true but are framed falsely. And defamation has much more serious consequences in Europe. Anyway, even a business not at fault has to pay for a PCI-DSS audit. A business at fault has lots more problems, at the very least paying $50-90 per customer to replace their cards. The simple fact is 80% of businesses in this situation go bankrupt at this point. Usually fraudsters make automated attacks using scripts they got from others. Only a few dozen attacks (on sites) succeed, and then they use other scripts to intercept payment data, which is all they want. They are cookie cutter scripts, and aren't customized for each site, and can't go after whatever personal data is particular to that site. So in most cases all they get is payment data. It's also likely that primary data, like a cloud drive, photo collection or medical records, are kept in completely separate systems with separate security, unlikely to hack both at once even if the hacker is willing to put lots and lots of engineering effort into it. Most hackers are script kiddies, able to run scripts others provided but unable to hack on their own. So it's likely that "none was leaked" is the reason they didn't give notification of private information leakage. Lastly, they can't get what you didn't upload. Site hacking is a well known phenomenon. A person who is concerned with privacy is cautious to not put things online that are too risky. It's also possible that this is blind guesswork on the part of Visa/MC, and they haven't positively identified any particular merchant, but are replacing your cards out of an abundance of caution. |
UK Online Stock Tradiing for Beginner and Small Amounts? | Try something like this: http://www.halifax.co.uk/sharedealing/our-accounts/fantasy-trader/ Virtual or fantasy trading is a great way to immerse yourself in that world and not lose your money whilst you make basic mistakes. Once real money is involved, there are some online platforms that are cheaper for lower amount investing than others. This article is a good, recent starting point for you: http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/diyinvesting/article-1718291/Pick-best-cheapest-investment-Isa-platform.html Best of luck in the investment casino! (And only risk money you can afford to lose - as with any form of investment, gambling, etc) |
Why have U.S. bank interest rates been so low for the past few years? | I've wondered the same thing. And, after reading the above replies, I think there is a simpler explanation. It goes like this. When the bank goes to make a loan they need capital to do it. So, they can get it from the federal reserve, another bank, or us. Well, if the federal reserve will loan it to them for lets say 0.05%, what do you think they are going to be willing to pay us? Id say maybe 0.04%. Anyway, I could be wrong, but this makes sense to me. |
Money transfer from Australia to India - avoid receiving ends service tax | All Bank fees were included in the service tax ambit [For example Check bounce, issue of duplicate statement, fees charged for remittance etc]. However as quite a few Banks structured the Remittance Business to show less charges and cover the difference in the Fx rate involved, the Govt has redone the service tax and one needs to pay Rs 120 for an amount of Rs 100,000. There is no way to avoid service tax on remittance if you are using a remittance service. |
Tenant wants to pay rent with EFT | Similar to @SoulsOpenSource's answer, I would suggest Venmo, which works like PayPal but is free for debit-card-to-debit-card transactions. More information here. |
Clarification on 529 fund | You are faced with a dilemma. If you use a 529 plan to fund your education, the short timeline of a few years will limit your returns that are tax free. Most people who use a 529 plan either purchase years of tuition via lump sum, when the child is young; or they put aside money on a regular basis that will grow tax deferred/tax free. Some states do give a tax break when the contribution is made by a state taxpayer into a plan run by the state. The long term plans generally use a risk profile that starts off heavily weighted in stock when the child is young, and becomes more fixed income as the child reaches their high school years. The idea is to protect the fund from big losses when there is no time to recover. If you choose the plan with the least risk the issue is that the amount of gains that are being protected from federal tax is small. If you pick a more aggressive plan the risk is that the losses could be larger than the state tax savings. Look at some of the other tax breaks for tuition to see if you qualify Credits An education credit helps with the cost of higher education by reducing the amount of tax owed on your tax return. If the credit reduces your tax to less than zero, you may get a refund. There are two education credits available: the American Opportunity Tax Credit and the Lifetime Learning Credit. Who Can Claim an Education Credit? There are additional rules for each credit, but you must meet all three of the following for either credit: If you’re eligible to claim the lifetime learning credit and are also eligible to claim the American opportunity credit for the same student in the same year, you can choose to claim either credit, but not both. You can't claim the AOTC if you were a nonresident alien for any part of the tax year unless you elect to be treated as a resident alien for federal tax purposes. For more information about AOTC and foreign students, visit American Opportunity Tax Credit - Information for Foreign Students. Deductions Tuition and Fees Deduction You may be able to deduct qualified education expenses paid during the year for yourself, your spouse or your dependent. You cannot claim this deduction if your filing status is married filing separately or if another person can claim an exemption for you as a dependent on his or her tax return. The qualified expenses must be for higher education. The tuition and fees deduction can reduce the amount of your income subject to tax by up to $4,000. This deduction, reported on Form 8917, Tuition and Fees Deduction, is taken as an adjustment to income. This means you can claim this deduction even if you do not itemize deductions on Schedule A (Form 1040). This deduction may be beneficial to you if, for example, you cannot take the lifetime learning credit because your income is too high. You may be able to take one of the education credits for your education expenses instead of a tuition and fees deduction. You can choose the one that will give you the lower tax. |
What are “upstream investments” and “downstream investments” in this context? | Upstream is into businesses that supply the original business; downstream is into businesses that make use of the original product. So in that description, what they are saying is that the original business received products from plantations and sent products to manufacturing. This is also called vertical integration. Meaning that they are diversifying along their supply chain so that they control more of it. This is in contrast with horizontal integration, where they move into new products that either compete with the existing products or which are entirely separate. In general, the upside of vertical integration is that a company is less reliant on suppliers (and intermediate consumers) and has more control over its supply chain. The downside is that they have less opportunity to partner with other companies in the same supply chain, as they compete with them. Some companies are better at managing to do both. For example, Amazon.com has integrated fulfillment and sales. But partners can still do their own fulfillment and/or sales, choosing how much to send out to Amazon. If you are investing in individual stocks, integrated companies can be problematic in that they cut across diversification areas. So they can be harder to balance with other stocks. You can either buy plantations, transport, and manufacturing together or not buy at all. If your investment strategy says to increase plantations and reduce manufacturing, this can be difficult to implement with an integrated company. Of course, everyone else has the same problem, which can lead to integrated companies being undervalued. So they may be an opportunity as a value stock. |
Why do some symbols not have an Options chain for specific expiration dates? | All openly traded securities must be registered with the SEC and setup with clearing agents. This is a costly process. The cost to provide an electronic market for a specific security is negligible. That is why the exchange fees per electronic trade are so small per security. It is so small in fact that exchanges compensate price makers partially at the expense of price takers, that exchanges partially give some portion of the overall fee to those that can help provide liquidity. The cost to provide an open outcry market for a specific security are somewhat onerous, but they are initiated before a security has any continual liquidity to provide a market for large trades, especially for futures. Every individual option contract must be registered and setup for clearing. Aside from the cost to setup each contract, expiration and strike intervals are limited by regulation. For an extremely liquid security like SPY, contracts could be offered for daily expiration and penny strike intervals, but they are currently forbidden. |
Why is it possible to just take out a ton of credit cards, max them out and default in 7 years? | It may become difficult to rent a car or a hotel room. It may affect your ability to get a job. Some employers now check credit reports and disqualify candidates with a poor credit report. It may affect your ability to get a security clearance or professional bonding. It may affect your ability to find housing. Many landlords check credit reports. You may be harassed morning, noon, and night by collection agencies. This can be theoretically solved by declaring bankruptcy, but the bankruptcy court may force the sale of some of your assets to make payments towards your debt. |
How to hedge against specific asset classes at low cost | I wonder in this case if it might be easier to look for an emerging markets fund that excludes china, and just shift into that. In years past I know there were a variety of 'Asian tiger' funds that excluded Japan for much the same reason, so these days it would not surprise me if there were similar emerging markets funds that excluded China. I can find some inverse ETF's that basically short the emerging markets as a whole, but not one that does just china. (then again I only spent a little time looking) |
What is the difference between a scrip dividend and a stock split? | Investopedia has a good definition. Stock dividends are similar to cash dividends; however, instead of cash, a company pays out stock. Stock splits occur when a company perceives that its stock price may be too high. Stock splits are usually done to increase the liquidity of the stock (more shares outstanding) and to make it more affordable for investors to buy regular lots (a regular lot = 100 shares). |
Taxes paid in USA for sending money to parents in India | I'm not certain about international transfers, but that amount is large enough that it could be subject to gift tax. https://www.irs.gov/Businesses/Small-Businesses-&-Self-Employed/Frequently-Asked-Questions-on-Gift-Taxes Note that the threshold for this tax is "per person, per person". For example, if you gave your father $12,5k, and gave your mother $12.5k, and your wife gave them each the same amounts, each of those gifts is small enough to be within the $14,000 exclusion and you and your wife would owe no gift tax. If you aren't married, you might want to spread this gift over two years to stay under that threshold. |
Friend was brainwashed by MLM-/ponzi investment scam. What can I do? | Even though this is really a psychology question, I'll try to give you an answer. You do nothing but stay away. What's going on is too small to matter. Bernie Madoff took investor's money and scammed them for $15B. That's B, billion, 9 zeros (Yes, I realize the UK Billion has 12, these are US Billion). Harry Markopolos was on to him, and presented his evidence to the government, but "No one would listen." In quotes because that's the title of the book he published on his experience. Even Barron's had an article suggesting that Madoff's returns were impossible. Eventually, it came to light. In my own experience, there was a mortgage acceleration product called "Money Merge Account." It claimed to help you pay off your mortgage in a fraction of the time "with no change to your budget." For two years or so, I was obsessed with exposing this scam, and wrote articles, nearly every week discussing every aspect of this product. Funny how even though mortgages are math that's pretty easy to explain, few sellers wanted to talk about the math. Using the same logic that you don't need to understand how a car works as long as you know how to drive. There were some people that would write to tell me I saved them the $3500 cost of that product, but mostly I argued with sellers who dismissed every word I wrote as if the math were incomprehensible to anyone but the software guys who wrote it. In the end, I had compiled a PDF with over 60 pages of my writing on the topic, and decided to call it quits. The product was recycled and now is sold as "Worth Unlimited," but the software is the same. This is all a tangent to your problem. It simply offers the fact that the big scam, Bernie, continued for a long time, and people who were otherwise intelligent, fell for his promises, and didn't want to believe otherwise. The mortgage software had many bloggers writing. Searching on the web found a lot of discussion, very easy to find. People will believe what they wish. Tell an Atheist that God exists, or a believer that He doesn't, and your words will fall on deaf ears. Unfortunately, this is no different. |
Can saving/investing 15% of your income starting age 25, likely make you a millionaire? | I just want to point out a couple of things, and I do not have enough reputation to comment. Saving 50% is totally possible. I know people saving 65%. For more see here EDIT: Let me repeat that 4% it the maximum you can assume if you want to be sure to have at least that return in the long term. It's not the average, it's the minimum, the value you can expect and plan with. Just to reinforce the claim, I can cite Irrational Exuberance of Robert Schiller, who explicitly says, on page 135 of the 2015 edition, that from January 1966 to January 1992 the real annual return was just 4.1%. Sure, this does not matter so much if you are investing all the way through, but it's still a 26 year period. |
How to decide which private student loan is right for me? | I speak from a position of experience, My BS and MS are both in Comp Sci. I know very little about loans or finances. That is very unfortunate as you are obviously an intelligent human being. Perhaps this is a good time to pause your formal education and get educated in personal finance. To me, it is that important. I study computer science, and am thus confident that I will be able to find work after I finish school. This kind of attitude can lead to trouble. You will likely have a high salary, but that does not always translate into prosperity. Personal finance is more about behavior then mathematics. I currently work with people that have high salaries in a low cost of living area. Some have lost homes due to foreclosure some are very limited in their options because of high student loan balances. Some are millionaires without hitting the IPO/startup lotto. The difference is behavior. It's possible that someone in my family will be able to cosign and help me out with this loan. This is indicative of lack of knowledge and poor financial behavior. This kind of thing can lead to strained relationships to the point where people don't talk to each other. Never co-sign for anyone, and if you value the relationship with a person never ask them to co-sign. I'll be working as a TA again for a $1000 stipend. Yikes! Why in the world would you work for 1K when you need 4K? You should find a way to earn 6K this semester so you can save some and put some toward the loans you already acquired. Accepting this kind of situation "raises red flags" on your attitude towards personal finance. And yes it is possible, you can earn that waiting tables and if you can find a part time programming gig you can make a lot more then that. Consider working as a TA and wait tables until you find that first programming gig. I am just about done with my undergraduate degree, and will be starting graduate school at the same university next semester. To me this is a recipe for failure in most cases. You have expended all your financing options to date and are planning to go backwards even more. Why not get out of school with your BS, and go to work? You can save up some of your MS tuition and most companies will provide tuition reimbursement. Computer Science/Software Engineering can be a fickle market. Right now things are going crazy and times are really good. However that was not always the case during my career and unlikely for yours. For example, Just this year I bypassed my highest rate of pay that occurred in 2003. I was out of work most of 2004, and for part of 2005 I actually made less then when I was working while in college. In 2009 my company cut our salaries by 5%, but the net cost to me was more like a 27% cut. In 2001 I worked as a contractor for a company that had a 10% reduction in full time employees, yet they kept us contractors working. Recently I talked with a recruiter about a position doing J2EE, which is what I am doing now. It required a high level security clearance which is not an easy thing to get. The rub was that it was located in a higher cost of living area and only paid about 70% of what I am making now. They required more and paid less, but such is the market. You need to learn about these things! Good luck. |
I have $12k in a Chase checking account, but want to start earning interest/saving/investing/etc to make more money. What should I do? | I had some extra money, so I opened American express saving account. At the time which was offering .80%, now .90%. I put most of the money in the saving account. The remainder of my money in a investment account at my local bank. I was in touch once a week with investment, I learned allot how the stock market worked and tax deferment(401k, IRA, IRA Roth). My suggestion is to do test run and see if you like it. Side note, NOT ALL investment are created equal. |
Taxes on foreign and local dividends held in a TFSA | As far as I read in many articles, all earnings (capital gains and dividends) from Canadian stocks will be always tax-free. Right? There's no withholding tax, ie. a $100 dividend means you get $100. There's no withholding for capital gains in shares for anybody. You will still have to pay taxes on the amounts, but that's only due at tax time and it could be very minor (or even a refund) for eligible Canadian dividends. That's because the company has already paid tax on those dividends. In contrast, holding U.S. or any foreign stock that yields dividends in a TFSA will pay 15% withholding tax and it is not recoverable. Correct, but the 15% is a special rate for regular shares and you need to fill out a W8-BEN. Your broker will probably make sure you have every few years. But if you hold the same stock in a non-registered account, this 15% withholding tax can be used as a foreign tax credit? Is this true or not or what are the considerations? That's true but reduces your Canadian tax payable, it's not refundable, so you have to have some tax to subtract it from. Another consideration is foreign dividends are included 100% in income no mater what the character is. That means you pay tax at your highest rate always if not held in a tax sheltered account. Canadian dividends that are in a non-registered account will pay taxes, I presume and I don't know how much, but the amount can be used also as a tax credit or are unrecoverable? What happens in order to take into account taxes paid by the company is, I read also that if you don't want to pay withholding taxes from foreign > dividends you can hold your stock in a RRSP or RRIF? You don't have any withholding taxes from US entities to what they consider Canadian retirement accounts. So TFSAs and RESPs aren't covered. Note that it has to be a US fund like SPY or VTI that trades in the US, and the account has to be RRSP/RRIF. You can't buy a Canadian listed ETF that holds US stocks and get the same treatment. This is also only for the US, not foreign like Europe or Asia. Also something like VT (total world) in the US will have withholding taxes from foreign (Europe & Asia mostly) before the money gets to the US. You can't get that back. Just an honourable mention for the UK, there's no withholding taxes for anybody, and I hear it's on sale. But at some point, if I withdraw the money, who do I need to pay taxes, > U.S. or Canada? Canada. |
Any Experience with the Gone Fishin' Portfolio? | Yes, the "based on" claim appears to be true – but the Nobel laureate did not personally design that specific investment portfolio ;-) It looks like the Gone Fishin' Portfolio is made up of a selection of low-fee stock and bond index funds, diversified by geography and market-capitalization, and regularly rebalanced. Excerpt from another article, dated 2003: The Gone Fishin’ Portfolio [circa 2003] Vanguard Total Stock Market Index (VTSMX) – 15% Vanguard Small-Cap Index (NAESX) – 15% Vanguard European Stock Index (VEURX) – 10% Vanguard Pacific Stock Index (VPACX) – 10% Vanguard Emerging Markets Index (VEIEX) – 10% Vanguard Short-term Bond Index (VFSTX) – 10% Vanguard High-Yield Corporates Fund (VWEHX) – 10% Vanguard Inflation-Protected Securities Fund (VIPSX) – 10% Vanguard REIT Index (VGSIX) – 5% Vanguard Precious Metals Fund (VGPMX) – 5% That does appear to me to be an example of a portfolio based on Modern Portfolio Theory (MPT), "which tries to maximize portfolio expected return for a given amount of portfolio risk" (per Wikipedia). MPT was introduced by Harry Markowitz, who did go on to share the 1990 Nobel Memorial Prize in Economic Sciences. (Note: That is the economics equivalent of the original Nobel Prize.) You'll find more information at NobelPrize.org - The Prize in Economics 1990 - Press Release. Finally, for what it's worth, it isn't rocket science to build a similar portfolio. While I don't want to knock the Gone Fishin' Portfolio (I like most of its parts), there are many similar portfolios out there based on the same concepts. For instance, I'm reminded of a similar (though simpler) portfolio called the Couch Potato Portfolio, made popular by MoneySense magazine up here in Canada. p.s. This other question about asset allocation is related and informative. |
Do individual stocks have futures trading | There's a market for single stock futures. The market (however small) is OneChicago, "an Equity Finance Exchange offering security futures products." I don't know how easy access is for retail investors. |
Why do 10 year-old luxury cars lose so much value? | There is usually a bunch of reasons for this, some psychological and some entirely practical. Let's start with the latter: If I wanted an older luxobarge, I'd buy something from the early to mid 1990s in good condition. These cars tend to be a little less complex and thus a little easier to repair, plus you can find them for prices that makes them to 'disposable'. |
While working overseas my retirement has not gone into a retirement account. Is it going to kill me on the FAFSA? | According to the FAFSA info here, they will count your nonretirement assets when figuring the EFC. The old Motley Fool forum question I mentioned in my comment suggests asking the school for a "special circumstances adjustment to your FAFSA". I don't know much about it, but googling finds many pages about it at different colleges. This would seem to be something you need to do individually with whatever school(s) your son winds up considering. Also, it is up to the school whether to have mercy on you and accept your request. Other than that, you should establish whatever retirement accounts you can and immediately begin contributing as much as possible. Given that the decision is likely to be complicated by your foreign income, you should seek professional advice from an accountant versed in such matters. |
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